Willow Class currently has Reception and Year 1 children. Reception children follow the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) curriculum, which is tailored to the individual's interests and the Year 1 children follow the National Curriculum. Mrs Bollan is the teacher and Mr Williams is the full time teaching assistant. We also have Mrs Pocklington working with us in the mornings and Mrs Atkinson in the afternoons.

PE

For PE, please ensure that your child has suitable indoor and outdoor kit, as I'm sure that if the weather is fair we will try to be outside. We also have timetabled physical activity sessions daily. Children will also need trainers in school if they want to access the wooden gym trail on the field or the tyres.

Willow Class will not be swimming this year, but we will have two full PE sessions a week.

Show and Tell

This is a weekly theme for the Reception children to encourage varied communication and language opportunities. Year 1 children can bring in home learning connected with our theme. Dedicated days will be set for Year 1 children to elaborate on their home learning projects. Please do not bring in toys to school. (EYFS may do, only if it is linked to our show and tell theme - these will be kept in a basket on the day.)

Reading

Please aim for little and often when reading with your child. Regular reading is hugely beneficial to your child's development and can be for as little as 5 minutes a day. Don't try and get through the whole book, use other texts from the environment and have fun with it. Please sign in your child's reading record when your child has completed the book so that we know is can be changed. For EYFS, we aim to change books on a Monday and a Thursday. For Year 1, we encourage children to change their books in the mornings as required.

Sammy and Benji

We have a class mascot called Sammy, who historically has come to stay with families over the course of the year. This October he travelled to Poland where he is getting to know the children in our partner schools over there. We look forward to hearing from him via emails and letters and we intend on writing to him too. Benji has a couple of new friends who will be taking Sammy's place until he returns. Please pop a few comments in the book to let us know what they get up to when they come to stay. We pull names out of a hat to decide who takes the mascots next. The children love telling their class mates all about the visit.